Ok, well heres my update. Running vista 32 bit and the newest drivers for my 8800GTS gave me a 500 point boost in 3d mark these new nvidia 158.18 drivers seem very impresive to me. Only 2 problems I encountered with them:

when I was playing oblivion the vista sidebar kept poppin in and out of my game, it was kind of annoying and never happened with the other drivers. But a simple alt+tab and closing the side bar fixed that problem lol.

Other problem was setting desktop resolution to 800x600 simply shrunk my viewing area on my moniter rather than strecthing it across the screen and increasing the size of everything like it should. (not that it matters, I dont do anything at those resolutions anyway lol).

But figured I would just let everyone know the perfomance gain these new nvidia 158.18 drivers for vista and how they work.

Ok, well heres my update. Running vista 32 bit and the newest drivers for my 8800GTS gave me a 500 point boost in 3d mark these new nvidia 158.18 drivers seem very impresive to me. Only 2 problems I encountered with them:

when I was playing oblivion the vista sidebar kept poppin in and out of my game, it was kind of annoying and never happened with the other drivers. But a simple alt+tab and closing the side bar fixed that problem lol.

Other problem was setting desktop resolution to 800x600 simply shrunk my viewing area on my moniter rather than strecthing it across the screen and increasing the size of everything like it should. (not that it matters, I dont do anything at those resolutions anyway lol).

But figured I would just let everyone know the perfomance gain these new nvidia 158.18 drivers for vista and how they work.

Anyone else get the same results with these drivers?

Are you running on an LCD screen? If so I remember seeing a setting in the last Nvidia drivers I played with (on my 6600gt) that gave you the choice to do "scaling" by drivers, video hardware, or monitor. It could be that's the issue you are having. (Just a guess, but it couldn't hurt to look).

nope, right now just an old 17" crt monitor. Ya i found it very weird, Im thinking mabey theres a refresh rate diference that the nvidia control panel is causing or something. I know in games like wow and bf2142 if you have different refresh rate than what your running on your desktop then the game window shrinks just like this so im going to check that out when i get home.

I don't wanna rain on anyones parade with the driver and all and using the 8800.

So I will point out first if your using a 17" monitor I can understand the resolution choice of 800x600.

My point is which I am finally getting to is that the 8800 does not perform well at all in any mode less than 1280x1024, the core, the memory, everything about the card was designed to run the fastest at any resolution from 1280 up...

If you monitor doesn't support that res I understand. Might be time to upgrade that monitor so you can truly utilize the potential in your video card.

lol, trust me a new monitor is on my list. But thats something my girlfriend wanted to get me for my birthday so it will be a couple months till I get that.

The reason I dont need those resolutions, This is the first computer I've owned with more up-todate hardware. When you grow up playing pc games with older equip having to run at 800x600 to get decent fps having a lower resolution dosent bother me all that much. And i usally game at 1024x768 but might go higher once I get a good monitor. (again im perfectly happy wiht 1024x768 )